On NSA Wiretaps

[teddywolf]

I've been meaning to post this for a number of months. Yes, I am behind.

There is a segment of the population that says that having almost all communications monitored makes us safer. After all, say the argumentative, we might get more vitally useful data that way, and that is more important than legality.

My rebuttal: intelligence gathering is about using your precious work hours and workforce to gather and sift through data from likely places. When you have the original program, listening in to people for whom warrants have been obtained, it is like running a good-sized lobster pot, say 8-10 gallons, into a largish colander to get a single bowl of pasta. In other words, its time consuming and wasteful, but you at least narrowed it down to the lobster pot from the bathtub.

The illegal warrantless wiretap program - never forget, it is illegal - is trying to pour the Pacific Ocean into that same sized collander for perhaps, say, pasta for the football team. Yes, we are talking about more pasta, yes for more people, but also we're talking about functionally never actually getting the pasta out.

Which is a better use of your precious intelligence man-hours? I leave it to you to decide. Excuse me, I have a bowl of rotini getting cold.

Comments

[worldmage.livejournal.com]

That's an excellent way of explaining the stupidity of trying to justify it for security purposes. More information isn't better; it's just more.

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

Government Policymaking:

1. Something Must Be Done.
2. Proposal X Is Something.
3. Therefore, X Must Be Done.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

There's another issue. There are a lot of conversations that *sound* terrible if you don't realize that they are innocent. Imagine plotting a role playing game with NSA listening in the background. Or, hell, imagine a murderer-to-be planning his alibi with an innocent partner. "We're still down for Monday night, right?" sounds a lot more like the innocent partner has prior knowledge of the crime to be committed.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Which is part of why this is good news:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/4/30/726170/-Good-News-from-Pres.-Obama-on-State-Secrets

In [April 29th]'s press conference, President Obama essentially renounced the appeals his administration made in the warrantless wiretapping and rendition cases, Al Haramain, Jewel, and Jeppesen. In these cases, the administration forwarded the same state secrets privilege argument that the Bush administration had, and, in both cases, were denied by the courts (Jeppesen, Al Haramain). Perhaps in light of these rejections, the administration is rethinking its approach.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

ooh, one can only hope!